Good Friday Five: Daredevil stunts and filters set to max

To celebrate Easter weekend, we present a SPECIAL Friday Five with absolutely ZERO stories eggs, bunnies or chicks. Youre welcome.

As you read this, the JAX team are taking a
well-deserved Easter vacation, and we’ll be back at the end of the
Easter weekend next Tuesday. For those celebrating Easter, and even
those who aren’t, we hope you have a have a great weekend and enjoy
our Good Friday Five.

1. Taking retro filters to the max

Instagram’s ‘retro’ filters may have their detractors,
but they’ve inspired a host of copycats, including Facebook and
Twitter’s own apps. Maxstagram, an
open-source Python program, takes a novel approach by applying
ImageMagick effects at random in the hope of producing a novel
effect.

“Most of the generated filters will look awful and could cause
severe trauma both physically and mentally to some individuals,”
admits creator Mayank Lahiri, “but usually at least a few in any
run are eye-popping.” A demo
site is available, along with a gallery of some of the
best results.

2. Fukushima two years on

Google have published some striking images of
Fukushima town Namie, two years on from the triple nuclear meltdown
which devastated the town, through Google Street View.

Google sent their camera-equipped vehicles around the
town earlier this month, after an invitation from Namie’s mayor
Tamotsu Baba, who wants the world to remember what happened in
March 2011.

“Ever since the disaster, the rest of the world has
been moving forward and many places in Japan have started
recovering. But, in Namie, time stands still.”

“We want this Street View imagery to become a
permanent record of what happened to Namie in the earthquake,
tsunami and nuclear disaster.”

It’s tough viewing but the Memories of the
Future site does an excellent job of documenting the region
before and after the disaster.

3. Mustang Wanted

Those of you with a fear of heights may want to sit this one
out. Ukrainian daredevil
Mustang Wanted was the talk of Twitter this week, for his
vertigo-inducing poses on top of some very lofty buildings.

If the pictures don’t give you an inkling of the
mysterious Mr. Wanted’s insanity, he’s also posted this video,
balancing on top of another Kiev building. Warning, it may make you
feel quite queasy.

“Everyone’s excited about the Raspberry Pi. But not all of us
have time to get the machine and set it up,” reads the homepage.
“Well, we’ve bought one for you and we’ve put it in the cloud!”

For just $5/month, you too can have access to a Raspberry Pi in
the cloud with 4GB SD Storage, or for $99/month upgrade to a
“Beowulf cluster” of Pis. And yes, it’s all just a joke (try
clicking on “buy now”).

5. Never too old

And finally… In the wake of the frankly depressing news that
17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio has
sold his startup Summly to Yahoo for £18m, here’s a reminder
that it’s not too late for the rest of us. Buzzfeed have put
together a compilation of some of the world’s greatest albums,
along with the age of the musicians involved at the time of
release.

Along the way there’s a few surprises: MIA put her first album
out when she was 30, half of Pink Floyd had his thirty when they
released Dark Side of the Moon; and even the sprightly Vampire
Weekend were in their mid-20s when they released their debut.